Netflix Defenders

Looks like all their friends are going to be caught up in “it”, whatever it is. Great stuff.

Looks like early reviews are alright, but not stellar: right now at 79%

We’ve been forcing ourselves to finish Iron Fist before we watch Defenders. It better be worth it!

I actually didn’t mind Iron Fist too much even if the main character was a bit flaccid. I thought the actor that played Ward did an excellent job and I was most interested in his story.

My son and I slogged our way to the end of Iron Fist last weekend. We both agreed the only interesting character was Ward. We are looking forward to the Defenders but our expectations have been appropriately tempered. Jessica Jones is still our favorite Netflix Marvel adaptation.

I’m three episodes in and really enjoying it, but a lot of that is just excitement to see more of Jessica Jones and Matt Murdoch (and to a lesser extent Luke Cage—he’s decent, but doesn’t have their charisma).

Whether it amounts to much in the end as a show is yet to be seen, but it’s satisfying me so far.

I’ve watched 2 episodes and just started on the 3rd one.

Starting to get a bit irritated now by all the talk of K’un Lun and Goa / Claires references to Iron Fist, feels like I really SHOULD go back and finish that show before continuing on with Defenders…

http://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-the-important-stuff-that-happens-in-iron-fist-so-1793445273 curtesy of OO poster so you don’t have to

hehe… Thanks!

I watched the first 3 episodes yesterday as well.

The only other show I watched prior to this was Jessica Jones so I was worried that I wouldn’t follow what’s going on but Episode 1’s painfully slow exposition did a decent job of catching people like me up to the story…boring as hell though.

Thankfully it starts to pick up around ep. 3

Ive only seen 2 episode but you are correct, the first two are about setting up the board. And yes, if youve seen all of the other series, they drag. But I get that its necessary. Since its a short season ( only 8 episodes ) hopefully the rest of the series has a bit more oomph to it.

This is pretty good, but they need to replace their “just out of film school” directory of photography. The framing and camera angles on this are so overdone sometimes its distracting me. Watch the scene where Murdock and True Blood are catching up at the diner. So many rule of third shots framed all backwards. Typically you want the actor framed facing inward in the shot as they comprise a third of the frame. The other two thirds they are facing into. In this scene (and many others) they frame the actor in the same third but facing outward for some reason. That means the background action is highlighted. So random extras in the background Become the focus of the shot. Terrible.

Characters and story so far though, I like! 3 eps in for me too.

If you’re Mr. Robot and you want a super-claustrophobic, paranoid feel to your show, that inversion can work and be really cool…but just because it works in that context doesn’t mean it’s good everywhere.

Yep, didn’t read that article yet but when you frame things like that you are trying to go for a certain feel. It’s an intentional inverse to make the viewer uneasy and looking past the actor. They also use extreme camera angles like almost under the table.

I don’t know, its a subtle complaint maybe, but it feels like randomness for the sake of randomness, to the exclusion of art. And now I’m talking about art in a Marvel TV series.

It’s more good than bad on the whole, and a moderately rewarding payoff for all the anticipation, but the best thing about it is really the setup, reacquainting oneself with the heroes, the team gradually getting together. That part (basically the first 4 or 5 episodes) is great fun. Beyond that point it’s got the usual problem with these shows - that the buildup, with all the hints at something mysterious and epic, promises more than it can really deliver within this sort of budget and limited cast. There’s also the same problem the 2nd DD series had re. the Black Sky - built up to be something more awesome than you actually get.

Partly connected with that, there’s not really enough payoff in terms of super stuff. Cage and Jones are quite heavyweight superheroes who need more to chew on power-wise, but they never get that, at least not in terms of big action. There are a few good power use moments out of fights (Jones has a great one towards the end), but while you sometimes get power use moments in fights too, with decent enough fx, it’s usually back to kick/punch immediately after that, as if nothing had happened (similar problem with the Power Fist moments, bar the very first when Danny meets Cage, which is awesome). The story should be set up so that higher level power usages are more decisive and, so to speak “finalizing” (at least for that given phase of fight or story beat).

Again, budget constraints, I suppose - but one can’t help thinking that the whole Hand/ninja/Black Sky, etc., storyline is a limiting factor.

Sadly, Finn Jones is the flaw in the acting ointment again, although one feels sorry for him because it’s obvious he’s working hard and doing his best; it’s simply that, as with Iron Fist, he’s not exactly terrible, but the other three leads and the rest of the cast are just so charismatic that, by contrast, he doesn’t quite hit the mark. Or to put it another way, his acting is workmanlike, but he still doesn’t have the “it” factor that the others do. (He’s actually better at the slightly comedic moments than he is at the serious, overwrought emotional bits - maybe I’m being too hard on him and he’s just miscast.)

(Can we please stop trying to stuff the younger, previously unknown GoT actors into other films and tv shows now? They all seem to have turned out to be fairly disappointing in their career-furthering roles since.)

Finished this last night and I mostly agree with @gurugeorge.

I really liked seeing the “Defenders” come together. Weirdly, this was what got the most criticism in the reviews I skimmed (which I think were limited to the first four episodes). That didn’t feel slow to me, it felt like a well paced build-up to catch us up with where the four leads were, and then bring them together. And once they were together, it felt just right. The banter, the skepticism, the selfish decisions, I really liked the dysfunctional dynamic of the team.

But once they’re together and we have to get on with the plot for the Hand, things get really stupid.

I know plenty of people were already frustrated with the Hand at the end of DD2 because they thought a faceless ninja army was too dumb/boring/goofy, but I was on board at the time. It was right out of the comics—some sinister force has a massive army of ninja assassins raising the dead and lurking in the shadows of New York! Sign me up!

But now we get to see the Hand in the Defenders, and everything is awful. I can’t just fill in the details with my imagination anymore, and it turns out to be an organization of uncharismatic chumps who have mismanaged their resources, but are slightly better than average at martial arts. And Sigourney Weaver is entirely wasted. It would be one thing if these “five fingers” were the local chapter crumbling under a power struggle, but the idea that these idiots are really supposed to be the leaders of this global ninja shadow army—who never actually show up, by the way—was so, so stupid.

The Defenders (the show), like Iron Fist (the show), apparently lacks both the ambition and the budget to explore the ideas they tease at to draw us in.

At the end of this, all I wanted was more Daredevil and Jessica Jones. Those are the only two shows they can really pull off (though I worry about DD now too if they keep running with the Hand/Electra stuff). Maybe Luke Cage could improve too, but by the end of The Defenders I was really over his reluctant hero schtick.

I guess Punisher might be good too; I liked Berenthal in the role and I don’t have much in the way of expectations since I don’t know any of his specific comic stories well. Some straightforward revenge military/crime shooty action stuff should be more in line with Netflix’s capabilities.

I think it would be awesome if Dare Devil season 3 showed Iron Fist taking on the DD mantle while thinking he was gone, and then DD showing up at the end of episode S3E1.

Also, I didn’t catch this originally, but it sounds like when Matt wakes up at the end of the Defenders, one of the nuns is calling for a woman that share’s Matt’s mom’s name (whom is a nun in the comics) so I think some of that stuff might be directly where we are heading.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that, but those closing shots really did hint at the possibility of Iron Fist becoming DD—something that’s happened in the comics too, though under different circumstances. That would be really cool, I hope they explore that.

I was pretty disappointed by how Jessica was portrayed. In that… she basically was just a random sassy chick with no powers. She gets overpowered by normies the whole series.

Bad enough that Luke Cage was already “like Jessica only better and also impossible to hurt,” but she doesn’t even get to be Jessica Jones. If her power was to pick locks instantly it would have been the same effect for 98% of the thing. She gets to kinda throw people around near the very end, but that’s about it.

I mean she’s literally physically overwhelmed by someone that Daredevil later overpowers. So she’s weaker than Daredevil. Without any martial arts. She’s basically a decent PI that drinks sometimes.

Luke meanwhile is randomly Superman and some regular dude. One minute Danny Rand punches him and it’s like punching a bridge, then later he’s getting knocked to his knees by some random thug. After eating 60 rifle rounds like it’s nothing.

Also. Literally one ninja. In the secret ninja organization. I guess they ran out of them or something. Seemed to be plenty of them for Daredevil, but I guess they made up like 0.1% of the organization. Everyone else was basically Yakuza rejects.

Overall it was great to see the characters again, but they sort of dropped the ball in a lot of ways.

Iron Fist sucked too, but he’s Iron Fist: he always sucked. At least he had moments where he was kinda cool and got to shine with his powers. Jessica got to… uh… break off a couple door knobs.

Except for that time where she catches a falling, filled elevator with one hand

But yeah, the inconsistency in our heroes powers was pretty bad, especially when it was clearly done to forward a scene. Then again, if they had properly represented our heroes powers with any consistency, the series would have been over in one episode and the rest would have been them having post heroe success shawarma with Ironman and Cap.